As ever, this year’s Olympics – an international bacchanal of physical perfection and triumphant will swaddled in human rights abuses and environmental catastrophe – are providing fuel for public delight and scorn in abundance. Making a strong showing in the “scorn” category already is the press, which, less than a week in, has managed to insult, demean and erase female athletes in a cornucopia of bungles.

Commentators take gloss off female Olympians' efforts and medals

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The Chicago Tribune announced American trap shooter Corey Cogdell-Unrein’s medal win with the headline “Wife of a Bears’ lineman wins a bronze medal today in Rio Olympics”, not even bothering to mention her name. In the afterglow of Katinka Hosszu’s world-record-breaking swim, NBC sportscaster Dan Hicks pointed out Hosszu’s husband and gushed: “And there’s the man responsible.” Another NBC commentator described the powerhouse US female gymnastics team as looking as though “they might as well be standing in the middle of a mall”. People Magazine called Simone Biles “the Michael Jordan of gymnastics”, as though we can’t possibly comprehend female greatness without a male proxy. Rightwing media co-opted Ginny Thrasher’s gold medal win in the 10-metre air rifle competition, dubbing her “a girl with a gun”, as a cudgel in their crusade against gun safety. In a Twitter exchange that rapidly went viral, Dutch cyclist Annemiek van Vleuten lamented her injuries after a crash, inspiring some random man to explain to her how to ride a bike: “First lesson in bicycling, keep your bike steady … whether fast or slow.”

The Olympics offer up women’s bodies for public scrutiny on a massive scale, but to surprisingly constructive effect, relatively speaking: It’s one of the only hit TV shows that celebrates female strength, skill and excellence without sexualising female existence. And it’s not that I think the authors of the aforementioned gaffes are vicious, deliberate misogynists. It’s more that they were raised in a culture – as we all were – that has almost no idea how to process competent women (see also: America’s current presidential election). You can feel a faint confusion pulsing behind every word. A girl … doing things!?

So, as a public service, here is a handy guide for how to talk and/or write about female Olympians without being a regressive creep who is constantly getting yelled at by feminists on the internet.

DO write about the sports they did! I’ve put together a quick and easy template for your basic reporting needs (cribbed and adapted from a piece I wrote about coverage of female politicians in 2014, because you could basically have this conversation about any industry, and I do):

DO write about female athletes the way you write about male athletes – ie without mentioning their gender except maybe in the name of the sport. Can you imagine if we brought up gender every time we wrote about men? “Perky male point guard Isaiah Thomas, stepping out in a flattering terrycloth headwrap, proves that men really can play ball and look cool-summery-sexy doing it!” See how unbearable that sounds? Chase that feeling.

DON’T spend more time discussing female athletes’ makeup, hairdos, very small shorts, hijabs, bitchy resting faces, voice pitch, thigh circumference, marital status and age than you spend analysing the incredible feats of strength and skill they have honed over a lifetime of superhuman discipline and restraint.

DON’T refer to women in terms of men they know, are related to, work with or have sex with. Women are fully-formed, autonomous people who do things. We are not pets or gadgets or sex-baubles.

DO write about gender when it’s relevant, such as when you’re discussing gender discrimination – for instance, the pay gap in women’s basketball and soccer, and the garbage way the media covers (or doesn’t) women’s sports.

DON’T bring your sex feelings into it. And, yes, I am aware that there are more than several women on Twitter with passionate opinions about the shoulder-to-waist ratios of the piles of trapezoids on the men’s swimming roster. But there is not currently a vacuum of serious, well-rounded coverage of men’s sports. There is not a historic precedent of men’s bodies eclipsing their accomplishments, and, in turn, undermining their credibility and hobbling their upward mobility in every major industry. It is OK to have sex feelings. Just watch where you’re spraying them.

Of course, there is plenty of smart, nuanced, neutral Olympics coverage out there too, and live TV is hard, and people make mistakes. But the way we talk about women – particularly women at the top of their fields, women whose power and prowess is undeniable – has a tangible impact on the way we treat female colleagues, female job interviewees and female presidents. This is not an accident. It is the system working as designed.

Athletes are athletes. If you care about sports, write about sports. If you care about gender equality, write about sports.